It always baffles me how much story writing consumes my life. If you happen to find yourself in casual conversation with me when a new story is in the works, you will hear about it. It just sort of…burbles out. (Is burbles a real word? I’m not getting the red squiggly line, so apparently it is…) Stories, for me, have a tendency to take over my mind. I am in a storyworld a ton, so my brain basically makes camp there and doesn’t bother trying to leave.
I get random ideas at random hours of the day. Usually it’s when I have the least access to a paper and pencil, so when I’m half-asleep or washing dishes or something. I waver between wondering if the sentence I just wrote was ingenious or whether it makes no sense. I want someone, usually my sister, to read the story every few days because I can’t tell if it’s coherent. It’s funny how writer-brain fills in all these details that make a dumpster-fire of a paragraph make sense.
When I first started writing long-form stories, and getting farther and farther into them with 50 or 60 pages and 10+ chapters, I would often write for a few hours or so, then make my sister come read what I’d just written. She had to come sit in my room at my desk, because the laptop I used at the time was…old, to put it mildly. The thing had no battery anymore because it had almost exploded and had to be plugged in 24/7. It started whirring after an hour or so. It also had a twangy piece of plastic that pops out of the side and pokes you in the leg if you try to rest it on your lap.
And when my manuscripts reached a larger size, they took forever to save…I was used to a quick Control-S saving my progress in a millisecond. Turns out that when it sudden is trying to add a thousand words to a 56,000 word document, it needs like fifteen seconds. And I had to save a LOT. Too many lost words had me paranoid. One time one of my siblings ran by when I was working on the couch and tripped over the power cord, consequently pulling it out of the plug… Just like that, a couple hundred words, down the drain.
Needless to say, the first manuscript I ever finished, written entirely on that computer, was a labour of blood, sweat and tears.
Anyway…I’m still a little like this. I want someone to read my writing frequently and tell me if it’s good or not. Like, right away. If I give you a copy to read, I will be squirming until you tell me you finished it. It’s kind of a problem. One thing that saved a bit of my sister’s sanity was when I got my new writing setup, with a iPad and keyboard that *gasp* actually connects to the internet. I discovered that I can export my writing straight into an eBook format, which means I can just send it to people and they can read it on their phone like it’s a real book. This was mind-boggling to me and so, so exciting. When I was in the airport the other week for quite some time, I could pull out my phone and read my writing on it within an app. I could make highlights and notes for editing purposes while also seeing the formatting in book-form. Word documents and books look very different, so it’s helpful to see how things look in a professional setting.
This little segment doesn’t really have a point. I guess I need to work on not being completely consumed by what I’m working on…but I think that might come with the territory.
Writing has taught me a lot about patience though. You sometimes can’t rush a story. The character has to walk the path the way they want to. Things don’t always go the way I want. Sometimes I get writer’s block. Sometimes there are other people who are going to be making noise while I’m working. Sometimes my sister can’t read my writing the literal second I send it to her. But it is still worth the time and mental energy spent. I always come out feeling so much better.
